May 2007

Guillermo Gonzalez, Privileged Planet astronomer and longtime target of atheist materialists, has been denied tenure. Fact sheet folllows.

Update:

For some background on the Gonzalez case (I will update more later), visit Bipod at Telic Thoughts:

So let’s get this straight. Hector Avalos, an atheist at Iowa State University, is leading a crusade of Scientific McCarthyism against Guillermo Gonzalez. The stated reason by Avalos: “”We certainly don’t want to give the impression to the public that intelligent design is what we do.” Now Avalos and the other 120 signers of the document will deny that they’re doing anything inappropriate, but let’s be serious. This is Scientific McCarthyism in a cheap tuxedo;-)

“Mr. Avalos said the statement was not intended to silence Mr. Gonzalez, or to get him fired…”

Sure. Then why single him out?

To respectfully protest this decision:

Dr. Gregory L. Geoffroy
President, Iowa State University
1750 Beardshear Hall
Ames, Iowa 50011-2035
(515) 294-2042

president@iastate.edu

It is barely conceivable that the Iowans have shame, even if “evolutionary psychology” has not discovered it yet. Heck, if I were a contributor to their alumni fund, I would be overwhelmed with shame.

Now back to the fact sheet: 

 Here is a fact sheet I have just received:

Biography of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University (ISU).

Born in Havana, he and his family fled from Cuba to the United States in 1967, where he earned a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Washington in 1993. Author of nearly 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers and co-author of a major college-level astronomy textbook, Dr. Gonzalez’s work led to the discovery of two new planets, and he has had his research featured in Science, Nature, and on the cover of Scientific American. Read More ›

If anyone whose comments have been showing up right away after submission is finding them being delayed or never showing up at all it’s probably because the third party service we use to keep spam (unwanted advertisements) out of the commentary is unpredictably flagging a lot of legitimate comments as spam. If it’s any consolation even authors and editors here (myself included) are getting comments held up for no discernable reason.

Has Charles Darwin got a new bulldog? In an interview with Alison St. John, who is hosting the Tom Fudge talk show on KPBS in San Diego, Randy Olson once again gives his classic spiel touting ‘Flock of Dodos’, which Alison depicts as a “delightful odyssey”, and which Randy heartily agrees. Go here for the interview. In comparing his quest to humorously, but factually chronicling the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution controversy, Randy cites both science and his work as ‘story telling’ (no argument there, with regards Darwinian theory), but inserts the caveat that the works of scientists, “are constrained by this ugly little thing called the truth”. ‘Flock of Dodos’ circumvents this constraint, in my opinion. As he’s done in Read More ›

We often hear the argument that evidence for common ancestry can also be interpreted as evidence of common design. Some years ago I made the argument that there was no way to discriminate between the two. The argument was countered (successfully IMO) by endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Read More ›

It now emerges that retired Australian political science prof Hiram Caton, relentless exposer of ridiculous Darwin hagiography, is an associate of the National Center for Science Education, the American Darwin education lobby. He tells me that they know about his article trashing the Darwin Exhbition. Caton, who is not affiliated with any religion, wonders what they think of it. So do I. But then, he’s Down Under, remember? And a day apart. Go here for more.

We hear about the ill effects of global warming shouted from the hilltops. I’ve always balanced this with talking about the positives here (that’s IF the climate does indeed warm up). Here’s an article talking about how, as the computer models are being refined, things aren’t looking so bad after all. Sea level won’t rise enough to cause any problems. Crops will flourish in the north where they haven’t flourished since the Medieval Warming a thousand years ago. Species diversity will increase. Germany will turn into a summer resort paradise. Storms will not increase in intensity. And we’ll even be healthier on average because the cold & flu season in the bitter north will be a thing of the past, more than offsetting additional heat-related deaths in warmer regions. In short, for many regions, global warming will be a godsend. But as the article points out, mentioning these things is politically incorrect.

Not the End of the World as We Know It
By Olaf Stampf

How bad is climate change really? Are catastrophic floods and terrible droughts headed our way? Despite widespread fears of a greenhouse hell, the latest computer simulations are delivering far less dramatic predictions about tomorrow’s climate.

Read More ›

Researchers have discovered that in certain competitive situations, the “fittest” phenotype is the one that is “rarest” for a given population. In a study of fruit flies, when “rovers” and “sitters” were foraging together, “rovers” did better if they were surrounded by “sitters”, and vice versa. As the author of the study put it: “If you’re a rover surrounded by many sitters, then the sitters are going to use up that patch and you’re going to do better by moving out into a new patch. So you’ll have an advantage because you’re not competing with the sitters who stay close to the initial resource. On the other hand, if you’re a sitter and you’re mostly with rovers, the rovers are Read More ›

In a new article in this week’s New Scientist magazine, the marsupial and placental genomes are compared. Only a meager 1.1% of the “coding” (coding for “genes”) portion of the placental genome is “unique”, while a whopping 20.5% of the “non-coding” (so-called ‘junk’ DNA) was unique to placental mammals. This indicates that where marsupials and placental mammals are genetically different is almost entirely to be found in the “junk DNA” sections of the genome. As one of the lead scientists remarks, “”Evolution is tinkering much more with the controls than with the genes themselves.” If the immense physiological differences separating the orders of marsupials and mammals is attributable almost entirely to the “control” of the genome, then, indeed, DNA not Read More ›

During a recent GOP debate among presidential candidates a moderator asked the field of ten to answer whether they believed in evolution by the raising of hands. How can one possibly answer this without a more rigorous definition of evolution? Three candidates Tancredo, Huckabee, and Brownback raised their hands indicating they didn’t believe in evolution. The only way to answer this ambiguous question was by gross political calculation of whether raising a hand would gain or lose more votes. Evolution of what and how? I believe in the evolution of life the same way I believe in the evolution of computers. It’s obvious both evolved in a stepwise fashion from simple beginnings but just as obvious is that neither could Read More ›

This is for ForTheKids (FTK) to discuss separation of church and state. An important topic IMO. I deleted her opening separation comment on the DCA Update II thread as well as responses because I wanted that thread to remain topical. Our blog software has no option for relocating comments. FTK has been so gracious to me on her blog when I go off topic I felt bad about it so here’s the venue. I’ll open it with links to a couple relevant articles I wrote last year, some verbatim quotes of relevant constitutional amendments, and some historical facts regarding use of the phrase by founders and the US Supreme Court: Read More ›

I added a category on the sidebar “DCA” so you can find the series of articles I’ve written about this cancer killing drug beginning in late January of this year. It’s been a month since the last update. Read More ›

I was out doing errands today, and what do you know? The Toronto city parking pay kiosks in my neighbourhood were plastered with signs advertising, “Intelligent Design: War on Science”, and a whole bunch of other stuff we should supposedly all rush down to see at the Brunswick Theatre. Yeah really. Intelligent design’s war on science? How about: Creeps’ war on public property? That’s more like it! If anyone catches these people, they should be made to remove all that stuff at their own trouble and expense. If they can’t afford regular advertising, that’s most likely because their cause isn’t popular. Unpopularity does not give them a right to deface public property. Or am I whistling down the wind here? Read More ›

The Darwinian story of how the giraffe got its long neck is perhaps the most popular and widely-told story of evolution. It is popular because it seems plausible: giraffes with slightly longer necks enjoyed a slight selective advantage in reaching the higher leaves of trees, and so over the ages these slight neck elongations accumulated, resulting in the modern giraffe. In fact, I used the giraffe story myself in my Mathematical Intelligencer article as an example of purely quantitative change, that natural selection possibly could explain, as opposed to the origins of new organs and new systems of organs. Biologist and genetic mutations expert Wolf-Ekkehard Loennig has written a detailed, thoroughly researched, 100 page study “The Evolution of the Long-Necked Read More ›

Just today, I received a most interesting note from a retired Australian poli sci professor Hiram Caton, late of Griffiths University, noting that the Darwin exhibition, developed at the American Museum of Natural History, is hitting the road, and may stop at a museum near you.

Caton explains,

You are well aware of my former colleague Dave Stove’s critique of Darwinism. We are alike in that we have no religious affiliation; also in that we do not believe that Darwinism can provide a basis for ethics or for ‘conservative’ politics, in the manner of Larry Arnhart.

At his site, Caton offers a most useful anti-docent, “Getting Our History Right: Six Errors about Darwin and His Influence,” documenting the following six errors: Read More ›

Why Atheism Fails: The Four Big Bangs
By Frank Pastore
Sunday, May 6, 2007

Their titles sound so confident:

• The Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism and Islam by Michel Onfray.

• God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.

• Letter to a Christian Nation: A Challenge to Faith by Sam Harris.

and of course, • The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Yet, like all atheists before them, they still can’t answer the fundamental questions of origins.

Read More ›